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Novell to retain UNIX copyrights

Novell has announced that it will be retaining the copyrights to the UNIX operating system. In the wake of the acquisition of Novell by Attachmate, which included a sale of intellectual property to CPTN, a Microsoft led consortium, there were questions raised over whether that intellectual property included the copyrights to the UNIX operating system.

These copyrights were at the heart of the SCO vs Linux legal case and there were concerns that if the copyright changed hands this legal action would be revived. Since Attachmate has said it will continue to run Novell's SUSE business it would not have made sense for the UNIX rights to have been sold separately.